Joe Biden reverses ban on transgenders serving in the military.

 

Joe Biden and Sec. Defense Lloyd Austin. AP.

Joe Biden announced today that he was reversing President Trump's ban on transgendered people serving in the military.  VOA. President Trump's ban allowed transgendered people to serve as their biological sex but would not allow anyone who had transitioned or pay for people who transition after serving. Trump cited the high costs of treatment and the disrupting they could cause as reasons for the ban. Biden has lifted this ban which will go into effect immediately. 

My Comment:

Talk about political correctness going mad. Despite the obvious reasons for this ban it was called bigoted by the Democrats and now it is gone. It has nothing to do with keeping our military ready for war and everything with advancing the cause of progressiveness. The original ban was never about hating transgender people, it was about keeping the military protected from the problems transgender people cause. 

So what is the problem with transgender people serving in the military? It's the same as any of the other medical conditions that prevent people from joining the military. If you have to take drugs everyday then they don't let you in and that's what happens with transgender people. Because it's difficult enough to ensure fighting forces have all the equipment the need, if someone needs drugs to function there is a very good chance that they could lose access to it in combat. 

People also tend to underestimate how dramatic surgery is for the transgendered. Both male to female and female to male post-op transgenders have a huge amount of care they need to even function, let alone live as their preferred gender. I'm not going to go into it here but seriously, just google it. It's a mess and in a combat situation I could see these people getting sick or even dying because they couldn't do the things they need to do to take care of their bodies. 

Unit cohesion is going to be a major issue as well. Having someone you know transition is a stressful and confusing situation in the best of times. When it happens in a military unit you are asking people to accept backup from someone who might not be able to handle what they are going through. Not to mention that a lot of people simply don't like transgender people and might be reluctant to work with them. 

But the biggest problem I see is suicide. Both the military and the transgendered are among the groups of people with the highest rate of suicide in the world. Putting the two groups together seems like a recipe for disaster. President Trump's executive order probably saved the lives of several transgendered people.

Of course given how rare transgendered people this new executive order isn't going to have a huge effect. Less than half of a percentage of Americans identify as transgender and that number is probably inflated due to the memetic effect of people talking about transgender people non-stop. I don't think there are more than a couple of hundred people in the entire country that both want to serve in the military and are transgender. In the end this order will hardly effect anyone, just like President Trump's order effected almost nobody.